More Bored-er With Less Border

So I actually like Whigham’s experimental borderless first panel. That leaves Midget Gaddis free to roam the comic pages, to hit on Cathy or get unsolicited advice from Mary Worth (who will no doubt also throw him over her shoulder and give him that spanking he sorely deserves.) But he best watch out to not get mistaken for an extra in Family Circus and beome trapped in that circular ring of Hell forever. On the other hand, that would be a fitting punishment for 4′6″ Jamarrrrr, seeing as how he’s already severely agitated us in just a few days of appearances.

Yo, a little help?

4/22/09

Thanks to Molly Kinsella getting lost in the Crock desert for several days, where she proceeds to hallucinate about tennis balls, the Milford girls lose the game!

4/23/09

Meanwhile, a reluctant (mostly reluctant to have to look at the ugliest mug in Milford. Ugh, no more close-ups of Thumb Poser please!) Robb Larue is about to give Shep the bad news that Bill “Opie” Hawkins is already putting the moves on Molly. I mean, who else would it be? Also, he should explain that a wingman can only do his job for the pilot when the pilot didn’t previously crash face-first into a chemical waste dump.

And even more meanwhiler, I would have never imagined a legitimate comic would ever attempt a Gil Thorp cross-over, but apparently such a thing has now happened. Thanks to alert reader Debbie, here’s this Wednesday’s Lio:

I’d have to say the weirdest thing about this is that Lio is being attacked by the Frank Bolle-era Gil Thorp characters… More specifically, it’s the characters from March 4th of last year!

Thumbs up to Mark Tatulli for this cross-over, which still makes way more sense than the real strip ever does! Thoughts?

Why? Because nobody wants to see Marty’s Moon, that’s why.

Well, enough waxing nostalgic about the bygone Berrill years. Why waste time enjoying good comics when you can waste all your time trying to figure out out bad ones? So today we ask, What does it all mean?

3/22/08

Panel 1:
Q: What does it mean when Anne says “Good thing the boys have practice.”
A: That Anne is an idiot.

Panel 2:
Q: What does it mean when Andrew is freaking out and trying to style his hair like Dagwood Bumstead?
A: It means he just realized today’s guest coach is Mark Trail, and he doesn’t want to get punched in the face.

Panel 3:
Q: What does it mean when Margaret Thatcher tries to barge into my house when I’m reading my Saturday comics?
A: It means you probably should have locked the door to your flat, you Labour Party wanker.

3/24/08

Holy crap, Marty Moon is pretending to be Big Ray Gregory. And he looks like a beatnick with the craziest oversized novelty shirt sleeves you’re ever gonna see (unless Popeye shows up wearing a suit.) Dear God, what does it all mean??

It means that the Rubin-esque seasonal crazy payoff is at hand! Every time we’re nearly lulled into a coma by the dragging plot, and every time something insane and bizare and inexplicable happens right before we move to a new story. And that’s just the way it goes. So it’s that.

What? You want more of an explanation? Well, as I noted, this is utterly inexplicable. Like bashing your own head in order to get more playing time. But I might as well speculate something idiotic. So I’d guess the whole thing started back on January 2, with Andrew’s interview with Marty. Curley-Horse’s charming discussion of talent despite small size must have eventually led to a disturbing drunken X-Rated Marty Moon video shoot, which Andrew then kept on file for a blackmail to be named later. Because really, why would Marty agree to something so stupid if it wasn’t literally his own ass on the line?

Wow, that theory took a wrong and gross turn. So please excuse me, I have to go scrub my brain now.

How to draw Gil Thorp!

…and so, as I suspected for no good reason whatsoever, the culprit in “The Case of the Somewhat Rude Letters” is none other than…Cliff Wrobek! As for why, we’ll just have to wait, but for the moment we can discuss: “Who’s the most dumberest here?”

Nominee: Cliff
Dumb Because: He’s been writing anonymous mean notes to his boss which will get him fired now that he’s been dicovered.
Motive: Unclear. Perhaps to get this crappy tour cancelled without having to quit and lose the awesome severance package. Or maybe just because he’s from the Tyler Jay School of Looney Logic.
Maybe Not So Dumb After All Because: With his obvious talent and good looks, Gail is clearly holding Cliff back from a successful solo career.

Nominee: Kaz
Dumb Because: He had to hire someone else to do his job, rendering himself obsolete.
Motive: Football season is coming soon and visiting places like Wheeling, West Virginia haven’t proved as glamorous as he’d hoped.
Maybe Not So Dumb After All Because: Ostensibly, Kaz got paid over $2000 to do nothing but ask a few questions to some stupid people. After growing bored with this nonsense, he outsourced the real work to a professional. Also, he was smart enough to look up something on the internet.

Nominee: Gail
Dumb Because: She paid Kaz to do nothing, and then paid a real privite eye to look into her really lame problem.
Motive: Years of heavy booze and drugs have turned her brain into Tarzana mush.
Maybe Not So Dumb After All Because: No reason. She’s just an idiot.

Winner of “Who’s the most dumberest here?”: Gail Martin!

So Kaz hired a professional, eh? Who could have cracked this case open? Why here’s your answer:

(On a related note, if you haven’t checked out “Reynard Noir: The Seedy Underworld of Slylock Fox”, you really ought to.)

What D’oh Hell?

Props to both Anonymous Novelist and Cash who correctly predicted something in this batshit-insane storyline: It’s all about the printer! Good God, who would ever have access to a printer?? It’s the key to solving “The Mystery of the Meanie-Pants Notes!” This is all so very exciting…let’s go over to Marty Moon for the play-by-play:

Thanks Marty! And Kaz is so disturbed by this painfully obvious revelation (or maybe he’s shocked that he and Kelly have been communicating via cheese graters this whole time) that he blurts out a “Simpsons” reference and knocks himself unconscious. While Kaz nurses his self-induced concussion, he sends his stunt double to the lobby of the Inkstain Motel (now with 50% more cubby-hole storage!) to do further investigation. Which leads to several questions, such as:

• Gail’s tour can afford a place that has a “Business Center” in it?
• Why couldn’t Kaz’s stunt double try a little harder to get the hair right? That’s not even close, dude.
• Will whoever that is get distracted by the laptop on the counter and just start punchin’ away?
• Wait, hold, on…Rewind for a sec! There was a “Simpsons” reference in today’s comic? What the…? Kaz said “D’oh!” Really, he did, I swear! Oh my Lord! Gil, what do you have to say about that?

KAZ-BOTO comics!

Jason has left the safe confines of the blog-o-sphere in order to go interact with other humans face-to-face for a few days. In his absence the automatic Gil Thorp blogging robot KAZ-BOT will be filling in!

KAZ-BOT: KAZ-BOT does not work holidays. KAZ-BOT’s non-union Mexican equivalent, KAZ-BOTO has taken over commentary for the day.

KAZ-BOTO: No compredo.

 KAZ-BOT: Habla abouto el comico “Gil Thorpo”, por favor!

KAZ-BOTO: Ah, si! El hombre “Blockhead Frankenstein.”  Muy bueno. Pero eso es mi comico favorito:

KAZ-BOT: Where the hell are their clothes? Who goes to the movies naked? What’s that about tequilla? Is that why they’re naked?

KAZ-BOTO: Es muy loco, no? No tienen pantalones!

KAZ-BOT: OK, KAZ-BOT gives up on this premise. Off to have some tequilla and go to the naked cinema. More tomorrow, if KAZ-BOT sobers up enough.

Where cartoon characters go to die…

So Branden’s big one sentence motivational speech doesn’t seem to have worked. Why was this a complete failure when Stormy’s epic 5-day motivational locker room talk last fall kinda sorta worked? Several reasons:

• One sentence speeches are not motivating to anyone.
• Stormy is a lumberjack. Brendan is a tennis player. Everyone would rather listen to a lumberjack than a tennis player.
• The Milford boys are dumb and forgot what they were angry about five minutes after it happened. The Milford girls are all petty, bitter shrews who will hold a grudge forever, long after they even remember how this all started. Hell, I barely remember why they’re mad at this point.

Lots of disturbing girls depicted today (and a big thanks to Frank McLaughlin for his continued destruction of any guy’s fantasy of what’s inside the girls’ locker room.) Most disturbing of course is: what the hell is going on with Paris’ hair? It’s not quite a she-mullet, but it’s damn close. Does she store extra snacks in that little pouch of hair back there?

Since the current two plotlines have beached themselves to die a slow painful death, let’s start a new one, shall we? I guess the reason we haven’t seen Mimi for a while was she was doing a guest spot over at Funky Winkerbean, where she caught a case of cancer. What? People can’t “catch” cancer you say? Well they can if they hang out in Funky Winkerbean long enough.

Clambake’s Got Legs

It’s no doubt Clambake has kick-started this strip out of its winter slumber. How did this happen you ask? It seems Johnny Hart, prior to his recent passing, collaborated on the following strip with Neil Rubin…

 

No , I don’t know what this means either. I think I’ll go back to whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing…